Group approaches to psychosocial intervention in medical care: a synthesis

Themes of a Long-Term AIDS Support Group for Gay Men

Support groups are established psychosocial treatment modalties in which clients address issues resulting from particular problems or diagnoses. In the past decade, the support group format has been widely adopted by community health clinics for persons diagnosed with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). As mainstream health systems assist more people with AlDS, initial expertise developed from the gay and lesbian health care response to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIR believed to be the cause of AlDS) provides valuable information for all health care practitioners. This discussion of a long-term (5-year) AIDS support group examines 6 content themes: marginity,making choices, coping with the emotional roller coaster, premature confrontation of life issues, living with a chronic illness versus dying with a terminal disease, and death and dying. The authors inform their observations through examining the support group literature for persons living with HIV and other chronic or terminal illnesses.